Ask Liz Weston

Get smart with your money

Saving Money

Are two savings accounts safer than one?

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Dear Liz: My wife and I will be receiving a sizable amount of money. We want to put the money into a high-yield joint savings account. We don’t want to exceed the FDIC protection. Can we each open joint accounts at the same bank and have each account covered up to the $250,000 limit?

Answer: That’s not quite how it works.

FDIC insurance is per depositor, per ownership category. Ownership categories include single accounts, joint accounts, certain retirement accounts such as IRAs and trust accounts, among others.

A joint account for the two of you would be covered up to $500,000, or $250,000 for each owner. A second joint account at the same bank would not increase your insurance coverage. If you had one joint account plus two single accounts, then your total coverage at the bank would be $1 million ($500,000 for the joint account, plus $250,000 for each individual account).

This assumes none of the accounts has beneficiaries. Naming one or more beneficiaries turns either joint or single accounts into trust accounts, for insurance purposes. Each owner of a trust account is covered up to $250,000 per beneficiary, to a maximum of $1.25 million for five or more beneficiaries.

Q&A: When temptation to spend an inheritance strikes, what’s the right move?

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Dear Liz: My brother is 54 and has always worked low-wage jobs. He owns a condo thanks to the help of our parents, and his monthly expenses are very low. He’s in a stable position. He does not have any retirement savings or really any other savings to speak of. Recently, he came into an inheritance of $62,000. He has asked my sister and I to help him make that grow and be secure until he retires and chooses to draw on it. What is the best way to help him grow this money in a safe way? We’d like it to be somewhat secured as we all are aware that the temptation to spend it now is strong.

Answer: The first step in investing is understanding your goal for the money and your timeline (how long until you may need the cash).

Your brother likely has at least two goals: an emergency fund and retirement savings.

Financial planners typically recommend an emergency fund equal to three to six months of expenses. A smaller amount can work for people with a lot of other resources, such as stocks they can sell, lines of credit they can borrow against or generous relatives who are willing to help. A larger amount might be smart for people with fewer resources or who might be out of work for extended periods.

Emergency funds need to be accessible, so the money should be in a safe, liquid place such as a bank account. To make the cash less tempting, your brother could consider opening a savings account with an online bank. These banks typically have no minimums and no fees, plus they pay a higher interest rate than their brick-and-mortar kin. Transferring the money to his checking account would typically take a few days, making it less easy to spend on impulse. Another option is to buy certificates of deposit to tie the money up for a set period of time. He can break into the CDs in an emergency but would have to forfeit some interest.

He can take more risk with his retirement funds, as he is likely at least a decade away from retirement. One option is to invest in a low-cost target date retirement fund, which gradually gets more conservative as the retirement date approaches.

Your brother can contribute up to $7,000 this year to an IRA or a Roth IRA. A Roth IRA may be the better option, since he’s unlikely to get much tax benefit from an IRA’s deductible contribution and Roth IRAs don’t have minimum distribution requirements.

He doesn’t have to limit his retirement savings to that annual contribution, however. He could consider investing more with a regular brokerage account and just mentally earmarking it for retirement.

Q&A: Where should you put your extra cash? Here are some ideas

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Dear Liz: At 82, I am selling my house and moving to a senior community. For the first time in my life, I will have a substantial amount of cash. Given my age and the fact that certificates of deposit and savings accounts are currently paying more than 5% interest, does it pay for me to start investing in other ways?

Answer: How you figure out what to do with your money is mostly the same whether you’re 28 or 82.

You start with your goal and your time horizon, or how long you have until you need the money.

For example, you may have to put aside some of the home sale proceeds to pay capital gains taxes if your home has appreciated more than the $250,000 that’s normally exempted from tax. Since the tax bill will be due within months of the sale, you shouldn’t take unnecessary risks with this cash. A high-yield savings account would be a good solution for any money you need to keep safe and liquid.

You also may want to earmark some money for long-term care. This goal is much more ambiguous, because it’s impossible to predict how much you’ll need or when. You may want to consult an elder law attorney, who can discuss your options.

Once you settle on a figure, you’ll want that money to be somewhere safe and readily accessible. Certificates of deposit that mature at different times could be an option, as could the high-yield savings account mentioned above.

If you have a goal that’s many years in the future, you could consider a mix of stocks and bonds. Stocks in particular offer long-term returns that historically beat inflation.

Most working people who want to retire will need to invest in stocks to accumulate and maintain a sufficient nest egg. They can take the risk of losing money in the short term because they have many years ahead for their investments to recover.

And that’s where your situation differs from that of a 28-year-old. The average life expectancy for an 82-year-old male is about eight more years, while the average life expectancy for an 82-year-old female is around nine more years, according to the Social Security Administration.

You may have enough time left to ride out a bad market. But if you don’t have to take such risks to achieve your goals, consider playing it a bit safer.

Q&A: Here’s how to budget your money using the 50/30/20 rule

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Dear Liz: What is the formula now for expenses? When growing up, we were told that one-third of net income should go to rent, but recently, I read that 50% is the standard with the remaining 50% divided between wants and savings.

Answer: You may be referring to the 50/30/20 budget, which suggests limiting “must haves” to 50% of after-tax income, leaving 30% for wants and 20% for savings and extra debt payments. (After-tax income is your gross income minus taxes and is often a different figure from your net income. Your net paycheck may include deductions for insurance premiums, retirement contributions and other expenses.)

The 50/30/20 budget was popularized by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) and her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, in their book, “All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan.” Warren once headed Harvard University’s Consumer Bankruptcy Project and promoted the budget as a way to help people reduce their chances of going broke.

The “must haves” category includes more than housing payments. It also includes other costs that would be difficult, expensive or dangerous to forgo temporarily, such as food, utilities, transportation, minimum loan payments and insurance.

The budgeting rule you grew up with, just like the 50/30/20 budget, was meant to help people live balanced financial lives. Limiting spending on big expenses, such as rent or mortgage payments, helps ensure there’s enough left over to save for the future, pay off the past and enjoy the present.

Of course, many people find it difficult to limit their must-have expenses to recommended levels, especially in high-cost areas. Housing costs alone can eat up half their incomes, or even more. To avoid going into debt, they may need to reduce other spending or saving or find ways to increase their income.

The best free museums in Paris

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Museums in Paris typically aren’t cheap, with adult ticket prices often ranging between $15 and $20, depending on the exchange rate. There are, however, a number of absolutely wonderful museums in Paris that are also absolutely free.

Here are some that I highly recommend:

Shops signs in the Musée Carnavalet.

The Musée Carnavalet. This Paris history museum is housed in two gorgeous 17th-century mansions in the Marais district. One of its highlights greets you as soon as you walk in: a collection of shop signs, some dating back to the Middle Ages. Another of my favorite rooms is an intact Art Nouveau jewelry store designed by Alphonse Mucha. Several beautifully decorated rooms, some imported from other mansions, illustrate how the upper crust lived in previous centuries. Downstairs you can see prehistoric tools as well as statues, jewelry and other remnants of Paris’ time as a Roman settlement. Upstairs there’s an extensive collection of Revolution memorabilia as well as maps, models, paintings and other exhibits illustrating the city’s history. Don’t miss the small but well-curated gift shop for unique items, including magnets shaped like some of those iconic signs.

Petit Palais

Petit Palais: The Petit Palais is another Paris museum where the building rivals the artwork. Both it and the nearby Grand Palais are considered outstanding examples of the Beaux-Arts style (think “over the top, more is more” architecture characterized by lots of statues, columns and decoration). The Petit Palais has a fine collection of paintings and sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries, but I love it for its beautiful interior garden, which you can enjoy while having lunch or coffee in the museum cafe. The Petit Palais is located just off the Champs-Élysées, not far from the Place de la Concorde.

A view of Place des Vosges from Victor Hugo’s apartment.

Maison Victor Hugo. You can check out two Paris must-sees with one visit: the Place de Vosges, a prestigious square in the Marais that dates to the early 1600s, and the home of Victor Hugo, who lived in one of its mansions from 1832 to 1848. Hugo wrote a big chunk of “Les Misérables” here and also indulged in a hobby of reworking old Gothic furniture. He wasn’t a bad draftsman, either; his drawings decorate several of the rooms.

Musée de la Vie Romantique. The “Museum of Romantic Life,” dedicated to the Romantic period in French art and literature, is housed in a compound once owned by painter Ary Scheffer in the Pigalle neighborhood, about a 15 minute walk downhill from Sacre Coeur. The writer George Sand attended salons there, and the exhibits include some of her (surprisingly good) landscape paintings as well as a large oil portrait of her. Once again, a highlight is the museum’s garden and cafe–another great place to rest your feet before heading back out onto Paris’ lively streets.

Musée Cognacq-Jay. Another standout museum in the Marais is the former home of Ernest Cognacq, founder of La Samaritaine department store chain, and his wife, Marie-Louise Jay. The museum’s collection focuses on 18th century art, including  paintings, sculptures, furniture and decorative arts, but more than half the pictures I took were of the lovely mansion itself.

You can find a list of other free museums at Paris’ official tourism site, along with a lengthy list of museums that are free on the first Sunday of the month (including heavyweights like the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d’Orsay). Some of these free-Sunday tickets must be reserved well in advance, however. If you can’t land a slot at one of the biggies, consider my all-around favorite Musée des Arts et Métiers, a science and technology museum that proves the French invented everything of importance, or Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, a museum of architecture and monumental sculpture at the Trocadéro.

A tip for families: Children under 18 are typically free even at the more expensive museums. Also, free admission is often extended to people under 26 if they’re residents of European Economic Area countries.

Q&A: Mortgage payoff or emergency savings?

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Dear Liz: My husband was laid off recently, and he quickly took a new job with a 25% pay cut to continue insurance benefits and the same retirement program. We regularly pay $500 to $1,300 extra on our house payment. We cannot keep that up. However, with his severance package and vacation day payout, we now have more in our bank account than we owe on our mortgage. If we paid off the $80,000 mortgage now (house is valued at $600,000), we’d have an emergency fund of only $10,000, but we could replenish those savings slowly each month with no house payment. We have no other debts. How do we know when is the right time to pay off the mortgage?

Answer: Think about what would happen if you paid off the mortgage and your husband were to be laid off again or you suffered some other financial setback. The $10,000 left in your emergency fund could be depleted quickly. If you don’t have stocks or other assets you could sell, you might have to raid your retirement accounts or turn to high-cost loans.

This is why financial planners recommend having an emergency fund equal to three to six months’ worth of expenses if possible — and why using your savings to pay off a low-rate debt might not be the best use of your money.

If you’re determined to pay off your mortgage, consider setting up a home equity line of credit first. That will give you a relatively inexpensive source of credit in an emergency.